So what was happening in Solomon's head, while he was going apeshit? Here's a little bird's eye view... ;)
Violence, creepy imagery and general M-rated stuff ahead. You've been warned.
Everything erupts into chaos.
He plunges through light and shadow, screams and moans and laughs igniting in his head. Tiny snippets of aromas, flickering flavors and tunes. Fistfights and splattering blood. Glimmering wineglasses, a shattering green bottle. A chainlink fence and cracked flesh. Saya in a white dress, windblown at a roof's edge.
Each image, inescapable, carrying a maelstrom of memories and emotions.
I'm… happy about your feelings.
Your word, my big brother, is my will too.
Farwell, Solomon Goldsmith.
Drowning in sight and sound, simultaneously groping through the haze as if struck deaf and blind. A single name sears the edges of his consciousness. So distinct, yet so impossible to place.
Diva? Saya?
Memory erupts into a tear of recognition. White fingers tangled like spiders in his hair. Red lips crushed to his, feeding him humid gusty breath between each shuddering sob. Canted deep into sweltering heat and pulse. Staring between each gasp into hazy eyes that flicker from blue to red to blue—
Diva?
Saya?
Images melting to bright sunlight and emerald grass and his sword-arm slashing Diva's throat. Resolving like a kaleidoscope, a bloodstained Saya charging with eyes red and sword upraised.
Take my hand. Come with us now.
Solomon. You want to play with us too?
He struggles but can't escape the onslaught. Like being caught in a riptide, whirling through massive overpowering waves. Except that riptide is now inside him. Mind igniting like a bomb to unleash a trapdoor of limitless sensations.
Far off, an ethereal whisper. Barely felt, yet the only thing that can be felt. Over and over, it says one thing.
Wake up.
He struggles wildly, trying to narrow the voice out. Feels it everywhere, yet nowhere.
A dollop of memory. A cold room, soft hands on his. Candlelight flickering beside his mother's deathbed.
"Don't," she tells him, voice little more than a whisper. "Don't confuse your duty with your dreams. Existence isn't the same as living."
Her body is cadaverous, consumed in ten months by an ill-begotten cancer. She was beautiful once, with curly gold hair and a smile full of promises. But an unhappy marriage into wealth had cut every promise short.
Solomon was her only child; the very picture of her.
Probably explained why his father could never stand the sight of him.
"Life can be fetters or freedom, Solomon. It's your own choice to wake up and decide, which one you want."
Wake up.
He remembers the words, lunging muddy and blood-splattered through trenches of the Great War.
A German soldier breaks through the rain of 150's shellings. Solomon's bowie knife sings as he slashes it into the intruder's eye. Bloody jelly erupts. His victim's mouth distorts in an insane scream, and Solomon lets the hate and adrenaline wash over him. All around, the rat-tat-tat of weapons, air thick with fear and shit and bloating corpses.
But his own heart pounds too fast for him to take it in.
His first kill: ludicrously simple. Wrenching his knife out, he stabs the man from navel to throat, coating both their uniforms in blood. The man dies in silence, barely struggling. But as the last air leaves his lungs, he sputters something—perhaps a name. His wife's? His mother's or daughter's?
Solomon has no idea.
He tells himself it isn't important—even as he spends the remainder of that night washing his hands over and over, until they're as red and raw as his eyes.
His days and nights are hellishly blurred; he no longer recognizes his face in puddles of water or splintered mirrors. Nails cracked and crusted with blood, fingers callused from swabbing out carbines and jabbing in eyes. The long days in trenches, eating tinned scraps and sipping murky water, turn him to a living gristle.
But he's gotten good at closing his eyes, tuning it all out. Learnt to shut his mind completely, not to move, waste energy, unless necessary.
He lives out each day by saving strength. While people scream and pray in the trenches, while the sky burns with explosions and the ground trembles, while he is hungry and exhausted, Solomon sleeps like nothing is wrong.
He sleeps even when he's wide-awake.
Wake up.
He keeps waiting, with every life he takes, to feel something. Some atavistic revulsion, some deep primal horror over the wrongness of his actions. But there's nothing there. In a way, perhaps it is impractical, even stupid, to imagine there would be. In real life, the immensity of day-to-day circumstances drowns out decorations such as right or wrong.
Morality has no place alongside survival. Here, in this warzone of life, degradation reigns supreme. God and goodness are a myth.
We're all just animals.
We'll never be anything better than animals.
The realization spawns a deep bitterness in him. An awful terror about the workings of the world.
He sees things in the war that grant him immunity against horror for the rest of his life. Rotting fields of bodies, gnarled hands sticking out like plants from the soil. Headless torsos exploding in shrapnel and spume. People vomiting out their own entrails, butchering each other over make-believe ideals.
And each day, he falls as if into a bottomless pit. One kill leads to another, then another. Going on and on, robbing him of every shred he has left to call innocence. It's like those stories his mother once told him, about people selling their souls. A single evil gives way to thousands more, until he's sucked in so deep he no longer remembers who he is anymore.
Each day tears a wound into his soul. A gash that won't close over.
"There's more to life than this, you know," Brother Amshel tells him.
They are seated at the long table in Amshel's château. The war is over now. Solomon works as a medical doctor, struggling, with the rest of the country, to recover from the war's insidious repercussions. His daily routines slide by without incident. But inside, nothing's the same.
He neither sleeps nor smiles; the faintest human touch drives him to convulsive disgust. Words like compassion and emotion are no longer at the tip of his tongue.
He prays every moment like a shipwrecked man. Sometimes to die, other times to live.
I don't want to be here. I want to be somewhere else.
But since the war's ended, he feels that way about everything.
"The whole world functions like a net, Solomon," Amshel explains. "We're all tied into it, by intertwined desires and purposes. To get what we want, there are ways all around us to achieve it. And the same is true of whatever you want."
Solomon nods, understanding, yet not. He sees red embers die at the fireplace. Smoke spirals into the air, shriveling out of sight in a manner that, due to insomnia or general despondency, seems to imply something.
What do I want?
He wants, more then anything, to feel alive again. To wake up.
Amshel's eyes are narrow. Intense yet somehow impersonal.
People say that the eyes are the windows to the soul. But Brother Amshel's are more like daggers. They cut through everything and everyone, as if he can see their viscera, their very thoughts.
They make Solomon feel as if he has nowhere to hide.
"Whatever any man desires, Solomon—it is entirely in his own means to attain. Fools philosophize on luck and destiny, but the most vital means of success is action. To get what you want, you need only the incentive to reach out and take it. The choice is entirely yours."
They've been discussing this matter for months now. About Solomon joining Amshel on what the older man refers to as a 'higher purpose'. An initiation—one that will free Solomon of all the weight from the war. Above Amshel's head, Solomon sees the Goldsmith's coat of arms. A unicorn and a lion poised on opposite sides, rearing on their hind legs as if in mid-battle. In the center, a fist clutching five arrows.
Below are the words: Unity, integrity, industry.
Funny. The war's taught him that no human possesses those qualities.
Solomon swallows, making his choice. Far off, his mother's words ring, a cathartic echo.
Wake up.
"Very well." His features are not stiff—merely too poised for relaxation. "I'll accept your offer, brother Amshel. I want to see what this initiation's all about."
On that night, he's introduced to Diva.
God, he's still haunted by that first glimpse of her. His darling Queen. Limbs pale in a dripping black cobweb of hair. Violet eyes pinned to his with such hunger.
It seems she likes you.
Drowning in a puddle of his own blood, he gulps in the liquid she offers him like salvation. Doesn't know who or what she is—only knows that she's unleashing him to freedom.
At least on the surface.
His ensuing years are a salvo of adrenaline. His world, so dull and gray after the war, floods with aroma and sparkle and sound. Bliss to the senses. He lets go of every inhibition, every small-minded sensibility a gentleman of his standing should possess. Limitations aren't his problem anymore—he's free.
The era tumbles in a mélange of cocaine and laughter and glittering bugle-beads. Every night a spree of delight and chaos. He remembers smoky clubs and tireless dance marathons, business meetings and tumbleweed travels, endless floods of champagne and blood. Diva curled up beside him each night in a silken spill, the shape echoed by the laughter pouring from her lips.
The world changes, skyscrapers and highways thrusting from the ground. Music plunges from Debussy to twirling disco balls and rock guitars. Cars distorting from satanic Sunbeams to purring Jaguars. Women's skirts shrinking from ankles to knees to thighs, suffragettes legalizing bastards and equal pay; hippies advocating free love and peace on earth.
While greed and politics, that inherent evil of man, remains untouched.
Wake up.
Solomon watches it play out, sometimes an observer, often a participant. As time drags on, his face assumes a strange expression; one that he'll wear for the rest of his life. Eyes cool and heavy-lidded. Lips curved in an ironic not-quite-smile, directed both at himself and the world.
Even now, when everything's changed, nothing really has.
Even nights where he and Diva are their freest, wrapped up in kisses and bites as tasty as blood, even when he and Karl race deliriously across moonlight, hunting game through forests and metropolises, even when time drags on like chains, scarring everything around him, yet leaving him eternally young, eternally strong…
...Even then, he subsists through life like a sleepwalker. Passion and finer sentiments hold no sanctity for him—the disconnection he felt as a human never leaves.
Perhaps he was a fool to ever think it would.
The more things change, the more they stay the same.
By the time he's CEO of Cinque Fleshe, he's resigned himself to this concave existence. He's part of an eternal kinship that works to trap the world in their net—a net he's perfectly content to help them weave. Brother Amshel tells him that by exploiting the humans' shared vices, they can be ruled, and ultimately destroyed, regardless of class or creed.
Alone in his towering office, Solomon gazes out at Paris' cityscape. Taking in the tight-gummed tenements and lofty high-rises, understanding what those people, rich or poor, have in common. Regardless of age or race, they all share the weakness of hunger and sickness. Food and medicine is a mandatory requirement.
Which is precisely what Cinque Fleshe caters to.
Impose your attack insidiously, and victory is guaranteed.
Solomon injects every inch of his phenomenal energy into his work. Doesn't matter whatever his aim—his means are unparalleled. Diva's favorite boy and Amshel's right-hand man, head of a swiftly-sprawling empire, he gets his every wish by smiling rather than frowning.
But sleep now eludes him forever. Human touch still feels revolting.
And inside, he still chants:
I don't want to be here. I want to be somewhere else.
On the surface, every aspect of his life is smooth. His days are busy, open and impersonal as a train terminus. People gravitate to him; he comes close to no one. Bevies of socialites, desirable women and prominent businessmen, all buzz around him, eager for his attention, his approval.
His manner remains unchanging. The same in the board's meetings, at dinner parties, in an elevator, or during sex. Urbane, considerate, amused and faintly aloof. Numbness closing all the while, like a fist at his throat.
Until the night of the Lycee ball.
"Pardon me, but may I kindly have this dance?"
It is Rosh Hashanah when he meets her—what his mother used to call the day one's future was being written down in the Book of Life. Solomon's amazed he still remembers it. He thought he'd discarded every religious detail since he became a Chevalier.
The more things change, the more they stay the same.
The girl before him is a vision of pink lace and cupid-bow lips. Petite and shorthaired as a garçonne—those flat-chested flappers so popular in the 1920s. Her face resembles Diva's, but with none of his Queen's irresistible vivacity.
Her's is a beauty that's subtler, sweeter. A secret meant only for him to discern.
"Just hold out your right hand."
Their fingers touch, and something strange happens. He's still not sure what it is—but he won't forget it as long as he lives.
Suddenly the sizzling chandeliers, the ballroom's hum, the effusion of perfume and silk, fades to fog.
Each scent and sensation draining into her.
She gives the word life its own aroma and music that night. And in her gaze, he feels, for the first time in decades, human, trembling, alive.
"When dancing the waltz, make sure to look into your partner's eyes."
He has no idea who she is, nor she him. Only knows that she feels like absolute perfection, right down to her center. Her smile, the light of her eyes, is sublime.
No idea that they're arch-enemies, each sworn to destroy everything the other stands for.
Despite the carnage, they feel perfect together. From the start.
Traitor is such a simple word for such a complex truth. It sounds so final and distinct, like death or birth. But it's really a long slide of fleeting actions and unthinkable thoughts. It starts small, and then it branches out to control every thought and breath, until one day you realize you're not the same person anymore.
Just like madness. And love.
His head churns, thoughts flapping like a million bats swooping from their cote. He hears a familiar sobbing somewhere. Little fingers in his hair, little mouth against his neck.
Please…
Please wake up.
His eyes snap open.
The mosaic on the wall is huge. A cascade of multicolor shards; the visual explosion of a forgotten fairytale. By its spectrum, the tub he and Saya are immersed in looks spectral, ghostly.
Saya's eyes are closed. She reclines on one end of the tub, Solomon on the other, face-to-face, legs overlapping. Her skin is flushed from the hot water, hair dripping. One small foot dents his stomach, the other bent against his thigh. The mosaic's tiles reflect off her glistening skin.
Solomon gently rubs her instep. "Euro for your thoughts?"
Saya's eyes flutter open. "Hm?"
Her face bears that faraway look he so dreads—as if she's floated somewhere he isn't meant to follow. But strangely enough, he recalls this moment as being one of the happiest points of their marriage. There was no wedge of coldness between them yet. Away from Haji's influence, Saya finally seemed to be opening up to him. Her every glance held a growing sweetness that nearly melted his brain.
"What're you brooding about?" he asks gently.
A hesitant smile. "Um… nothing, really. I'm all blank. And sleepy."
"Of course. Which is usually when the morbid thoughts begin ticking."
"Ha." She nudges him with her foot, shy yet playful. Solomon smiles and catches her ankle. Her shreds of happiness are like green leaves in a burnt field—endlessly rare and delightful to him. He moves to take her by the waist, settle her astride him, the better to enjoy all that languid slippery skin.
Then Saya murmurs:
"Solomon… can I ask you something?"
"Anything you wish."
"What would you do… if I left?"
"Left? Where are you planning to run to, angel?"
"No, I meant leave. Like a… separation." Her tone is gentle, even vague. But snaking deviously between that, he hears something darker, more earnest.
The water is steaming-hot, but he feels a sudden chill. He tries to keep his expression neutral. "Why would you want to leave, Saya?"
"It's just…a hypothetical question. A game."
"I don't like this game. I'd rather play a different kind." He spiders his fingers along her knee, coaxing her slippery ankle against his shoulder in demonstration.
Saya tenses, but doesn't move her leg. "Tell me."
He stifles a sigh, but makes an effort to indulge her. "What kind of 'leave', are we discussing? A brief parting, or…?"
He trails off, because the very idea of her absence, emotional or corporeal, chokes him to death.
"Could it be… both?"
"What do you mean? You'll leave me on a jet plane, and mysteriously vanish somewhere over the Bermuda triangle?"
A brief giggle. "Leave on a jet plane? Isn't that a really old song?"
"It was brand new when I first heard it." He takes this as leeway to change the subject. "Where did you first listen to it? I doubt you'd have time to memorize it in the war."
Her eyes dip, hesitant. "My father. He used to sing it sometimes. When he was cooking or fixing stuff. Kai used to call it cornball."
"Your… father?"
"Mm. The one in Okinawa?"
Solomon's lips thin.
Of course. That fake family of hers will never be far from her thoughts.
Either them… or Haji.
To shake off the upsurge of jealousy, he hums the song, dredging it up out of memory. To his startled delight, Saya picks up the fading notes in her own sweet voice, cooing along. He smiles. She can sometimes, in pitch and tone, sound so much like Diva. Diva would always be singing some nonsense melody in that fiery-faerie voice of hers. She was terminally afraid of silences.
Perhaps that's why, whenever the silences between him and Saya yawn too wide, Solomon feels equally frightened.
There's something so empty and deathlike to them, as if he's losing all grasp on reality.
"You haven't answered my question," Saya remarks.
He sighs, eyes closed. Her ankle is slick and warm against his shoulder, slender enough to curve his entire palm around.
"Saya, that's such a senseless question. Of course I wouldn't like it if you left me. I'd utterly despise it. What would I have to live for, if you weren't here?"
"Solomon…"
"I mean it. If things ever grow so terrible as that—if you ever get snatched out of my life—I'd find the highest possible skyscraper, and leap off without a second thought. They'd scrape my remains off the pavement next morning. Can you imagine the news? 'French businessman dies in idiotic leaping stint, splattering blood and broken limbs all across the boulevard.' "
"Solomon, don't…" He hears the unease in Saya's voice. She sometimes tells him that he has a strange way of putting things—perhaps not strange as much as too graphic. But it's only the truth, and he's never been particularly good at keeping that to himself.
"You… sound almost like you mean it," she whispers.
"I do. Every word."
He hears her swallow.
He opens his eyes to regard her. Wet hair hugs the shape of her skull, dark strands spilling over her shoulders to fall across the apple of each breast. Under wet-spiked lashes, her eyes are bright, enormously expressive.
Part of him wonders how she ever managed to survive, wearing her emotions on her sleeve that way. It makes him want to hold her hand, correct and guide her. But the other part of him hopes she'll always stay this pure.
"Why are you asking me this, anyway?" he asks. "Is this some kind of Twenty Questions game?"
"No, it's just… theoretical."
"Theoretical? Or a test?"
She winces. He feels the subtle acceleration of her pulse in the steamy air, and knows he's caught her out. Gently, he slides her leg down into the water, so her ankle is pressed against his flank. Fingers curled around it, gripping tight.
"Saya, look at me."
Reluctantly, she does.
"Why would you want to leave? Are you unhappy about something? Because you know I'd gladly give you whatever you wish for. I never want you to feel deprived or sad. My only desire is to see you happy."
"Solomon…" Her mouth is strangely rueful. "That wasn't what I meant. It's just… you've done so much for me. Sometimes I just worry that—I don't know—this is all going to go a little too far."
He sighs. "There you go again, with those Morbid Thoughts."
"I'm serious, Solomon."
"So am I." He reaches out, beckoning as if to a kitten. "Come here."
Saya hesitates before slipping closer to him. He draws her in so her back is pressed to his chest, wrapping his arms and legs around her from behind. Wet skin slides on his, that delicious body that is the centerpiece of all his yearnings, his addictions, at his sole liberty to enjoy and possess.
Sometimes, holding her this way, he wonders how that spineless Haji never claimed her as his, despite all the years spent alongside her. How could any man remain oblivious to that fire and intensity residing in Saya's nature, just waiting to be unleashed?
It's a good thing Haji never had the courage to try anything with her.
Otherwise all this happiness would never have come my way.
Whenever he thinks about it, he holds her even tighter.
"Why," he asks gently, chin resting on her shoulder. "Would you think something between us would go wrong, Saya? Are you upset about something?"
"No..."
"What then?"
"I—" She averts her eyes, squirming in a way that reminds him eerily of Diva, when she was having one of her manic spells, and couldn't sit still or express herself.
And suddenly, realization blooms. Incredulous, Solomon feels his lips part.
"Wait. You're not… worried because you're unhappy at all, are you? It's..."
... The opposite.
He's dumbstruck. Every time he remembers this moment, he wonders if it wasn't a dream. Saya never out-and-out says anything to him. But he hears the truth in the way she curls into herself, the way her skin heats with a sudden subterranean intensity that has nothing to do with the hot bathwater.
She's asking him this question, worrying about their future, not because she's unhappy with him—but because she isn't. For the first time—at last—she's seeing her life with him not as some kind of consolation prize, but just as… her life.
The room seems to spin, so everything feels dreamy and surreal. Perhaps because it's the first—the only—honest talk between them, without cajolery on his part, and wariness on hers. Solomon realizes he's so unused to the mutual candor that he doesn't know how to respond. It makes him feel… out of depth? Confused?
Afraid.
"I just don't want anything bad to happen, Solomon," Saya murmurs. "I don't… want to end up hurting you."
"Hurting me?" He tightens his arms around her. "Saya, the only possible way you could hurt me… is by shutting me out, or forsaking me. You know that."
She swallows again. "What if… it comes to a point where I have no choice?"
"What do you mean?" He chuckles, trying to mask his unease. "Are you tired of me already?"
"It's not that…"
He lays his face alongside hers. "What then? You think I'd ever tire of you? There isn't enough time in eternity for that to happen, Saya. I love you more with every passing second."
She smiles, but with a somber edge. "What if… it gets to be a little to much for me?"
"What? You think I'd be so hopelessly smitten that I'll end up driving you away?" His voice is light—but the idea sends a chill through him.
"Taking anything to extremes…is a bad idea, Solomon. The war taught me that, if nothing else."
"Angel, I've seen several wars in the March of so-called Progress. And I don't just mean our own. If there's one thing they taught me, it's that life shouldn't be lived halfway, but completely. Otherwise you may as well be dead." He drops a gentle kiss to her shoulder. "I know we've been married only a short time—but you've already become an absolute essentiality to me. I'd never do anything to hurt you. You must believe that."
"If you say so…"
"No, I mean it. In fact—" He breaks off, studying her. "Wait. Now you're just teasing me. Look at that blush. There, I knew it."
She giggles, and the melody thrums through him. He presses his face into her hair, her scent somehow augmenting his fears, yet at the same time soothing him. She feels wonderful, like warmth and energy and precious shimmering life. Something to be sheltered, kept safe from the ugliness of the world.
God, I never want to lose her.
Never never never…
"Would you be sorry, if you had to end up leaving me?" The question slips suddenly from his lips.
Saya tenses, as if she's holding her breath. Turning, she presses her lips against the ledge of his collarbone, mouthing something. He wants to ask what she said, but then her little fangs gnaw at the hollow beneath his jaw. Gently, then, upon his gasp, harder. Little fingers go adventuring at the same time, slipping between them to curl around that one part of him that's been growing increasingly more agitated since she settled against him.
Surprising to realize he'd been the one to teach her so much about sex. With him, Diva was the one who'd molded him in so much. But it seems fitting now; he practiced to perfection on Diva, as if tailor-made to later serve her twin, whose entire being is a visceral echo of his late Queen's.
But unlike Diva, who was beyond all reach, he'll never allow Saya to slip away. Not as long as he lives.
It's a long time before he remembers the question he asked her. Longer still, when he realizes what she said to him.
Pressing her lips to his skin, she'd closed her eyes and whispered… Yes.
Wake up.
Images blur and distort, a whirling aegri somnia. He surfaces through blackness, the flashback still curdling each thought. Sees, as if superimposed, the apartment in Prague. Blood splattering the walls, furniture crumpled like paper-planes. Outside, traffic hums. His mind slides effortlessly across the building. He can taste the cold air outside, hear the crunch of tires from cars, the swishing of wind in trees.
A rich crimson carpet leading to the door undulates in a sensual wave, a steady, winding stream of blood.
He sees a girl standing at the edge, swaddled in black furs.
Saya?
She turns her head, and her eyes are horrific. One red, one blue. Like a cat's.
Diva?
Saya?
Looking closer, he sees that her fur coat is glistening. Soaked in wine?
No. Blood.
Blood drips from the coat's edges, speckling the carpet in wet lines. Which suddenly, inexplicably, turn into scarlet snakes, hissing and slithering away.
The girl—neither Saya or Diva—sighs mournfully. Her pale hand slips out between the furs, waving at him.
Goodbye.
"Don't—please don't go." Solomon's words run together, heavy and slurred. There seems to be an echo somewhere. He lurches for the girl, wanting to catch her, ask who she is.
She sighs again, and, lifting her arms, lets the coat drop. The wet material hits the red carpet with a dull squelch. And Solomon realizes, aghast, that the carpet isn't red at all—but drenched in blood. Every square inch. Blood that coalesces into more serpents. Glimmering, undulating across the floor, an entire slippery ocean of them.
But that doesn't terrify him so much as the girl.
She's naked under the fur coat. Whole body, top to toe, stained in red.
From her own blood.
It seeps from ragged open wounds on her flesh. Bites, gashes, everywhere he looks. Her belly is a fertile orb, striped in slashings.
Slashings… from his own hands.
Jerkily, Solomon raises his palms, stares at the blood coating them. Embedded into his fingerprints, blackening his nails. Just like in the Great War.
I did this.
It was me.
The girl—his Saya—sighs inconsolably.
Again, she waves in goodbye.
Solomon's throat tightens.
Oh God
This can't be happening.
"I told you," she breathes, and tears stream from her eyes, turning to diamond-bright snowflakes that shimmer away. "Wake up."
She lurches then, collapsing boneless into the writhing mass of snakes. Covered, roped down, letting them swarm all over her, coiling and glittering, until she's enveloped head to toe. Swallowed alive.
An eyeblink, and she vanishes from sight.
Bile gushes up Solomon's throat.
No.
This can't be happening.
Wake up.
I have to wake up.
He screams. Screams and screams, and the world splatters to red.
In the pale dawn light, she lies on the wet carpet. Whole body an ache. Her wounds heal slowly, half from the blood she's lost, half from the decreased potency in what little that's left.
You're going to go into labor soon.
Get up, Saya. Please get up.
The voice is like Haji's.
She wants to obey, but her limbs feel weak. If anyone ever asked her, how she managed to knock Solomon out, she wouldn't remember a thing.
Except that she did.
He lies motionless beside her now. So stuck full of hypodermic needles, in the neck, arms, belly, chest, that he resembles a porcupine. He'd been impossible to take down, which surprised her. Shouldn't have, given he was her sister's Chevalier.
She remembers how difficult it was to defeat Phantom and James; the scores of energy and determination she'd expended in killing them.
But they were nothing compared to this.
She'd never loved those men. Never lived with them, borne their weight against her flesh or their children in her womb. The impediment in fighting Solomon hadn't been his strength—but in that of her own sentiment.
Nothing was simple where he was concerned.
He's sprawled out on the carpet now. Clothes drenched in blood, coils of sweat-soaked hair falling across his forehead. But beneath that, his face is sweet in repose, lips parted, eyes moving gently behind closed lids.
He seems asleep, a little boy exhausted after a trauma.
Saya's lies curved against him, like she used to when they'd be together in bed. Can't understand why. After how he brutalized her, she should be shrinking from his touch.
Perhaps it's instinct. The animal comfort of huddling to someone familiar, when everything else seems to be crashing to madness. Like little children alone at home, fighting over what to watch on television—only to cling to each other in fright when the lights go out.
Get up, Saya.
The voice, so much like Haji's, bears momentum.
She grits her teeth, rising. Every muscle screams in protest, but she ignores it. Mind detached from her body, floating untethered in a post-disaster numbness. Senseless, drugged, half-dead.
Kneeling by Solomon, she gently draws each tranquilizer needle from his skin. First, second, fourth… she loses count after ten. Each punctured spot drools a thin line of blood. Without realizing it, Saya leans in, licking it away. Her own body is so starved for vitamins that her instincts are asserting her to feed however she can.
Solomon stirs, murmuring, then subsides. She wonders what he's dreaming about.
Do Chevaliers dream at all?
She'd never thought to ask him.
She understands, dimly, that those blood-packs she'd fed Solomon were drugged. Experimental steroids; some sort of amphetamine; she has no clue.
Only knows that they turned her husband into a ravening monster.
Regret chokes her. This must've been how Haji felt, when he let Red Shield inject her with his blood to unleash the Vietnam massacre.
I'm so sorry, Solomon…
She wants to cry, but her eyes are parched. Dried up as something moldering in a tomb.
Instead, as if to compensate, a tiny tear escapes from the corner of Solomon's closed eye. It rolls in a shiny line down his cheek, where she catches it with a finger and lifts it to her mouth.
It tastes so salty. A wild hunger seizes her; her fangs descend, itching to sink into his throat.
No.
You have to get out of here.
Otherwise you're going to drain and kill him.
Moving like a rusted machine, she staggers to her room. She wants to take a bath. The need, rising out of nowhere, is sudden and overwhelming. There's a lot to be done—but she must take a bath. Every inch of her feels grimy, smirched in guilt and spume.
Her clothes are crusted in dried blood; taking them off is impossible. She gets out a pair of scissor from her sewing kit, cutting through her sleeves and dried buttons. Lets each garment fall where it will, stiff as cardboard. Once immersed in the tub, her wounds turn the water a delicate rose. Still bleeding, but slowly, slowly, closing up.
Good.
She dresses in a pair of black slacks and a loose fullsleeve sweater. Both are one size too large, but her belly is so swollen that they fit perfectly. She remembers when Solomon first got them for her. They'd seemed too big then, sleeves hanging past her fingers, trousers extending beyond her toes.
She remembers stuffing a pillow under the sweater and examining herself in the mirror, to see how she'd look in a few months. The massive would-be belly had seemed grotesque on her frame, repulsive.
Solomon had just chuckled and put his arms around her. "The outfit's a little oversized, granted. But I don't want you feeling uncomfortable when you're in your final trimester. Lets leave the Couture to those who aren't carrying such an important package, right?"
She'd smiled at that, at how unswerving his adoration for her could be. His sweetness, his ever-renewing delight in her.
Stop thinking about that.
Otherwise you'll never have the strength to leave him.
It takes more than blind adoration to make a marriage last. It takes trust, understanding—none of which she and Solomon share. They're like two forts positioned side-by-side, waving white flags in superficial surrender. Unable to see into each other—or outside of themselves.
Entering Solomon's room is like stepping into an alternate dimension. Everything is so neat and glossy, almost unreal. She rummages through his drawers and cupboards. Snowy folds of underwear, starched shirts in hangers, coats in plastic wrappings. She finds his wallet in a daguerreotype case, along with three different credit cards.
Takes enough to get her plane tickets and a taxi to the airport.
Moving around the room, she plans her journey mechanically. Whatever flight she catches will stop over at the Charles de Gaulle in Paris, before heading over to Okinawa. It's going to be a long trip.
Pressing a hand to her belly, she prays her babies will stay inside until she gets there.
She stuffs her little belongings into a carry-on, taking nothing but what she came to Solomon with. But instead of exiting the flat, she finds herself, like a felon craving punishment, drawn back to the dining room.
To Solomon.
He's still sprawled on his side. Arms stretched out before him, body curled slightly as if in pain. In the dim light, his pale skin seems to glow. He looks serene, sweet. Far younger than he's ever looked in real life.
Hesitant, Saya kneels beside him, leaning in to press a small, emotionally-confused kiss on his forehead. His skin is sticky with drying blood.
Outside the building, a siren wails.
Solomon's eyes flicker open.
"Don't," he gasps.
Saya jerks back. "S-Solomon—"
He tries to lift his head, but can't. His eyes are hazy, unfocused; he stares, but doesn't seem to see her.
"Don't go…"
"Solomon—I'm sorry. I just can't stay with you. I have to go."
"Don't—please don't—"
"I'm sorry—" She tries to get up, but he seizes her ankle, dragging her back.
Saya hits her aching tailbone with an oof. Solomon's grip is tight, violent; his whole body seems to ripple with manic energy.
"Don't—I won't let you—"
"Solomon, please—" Her heart hammers when he yanks her closer. She twists, struggling to escape.
A tranquilizer hypodermic lies before her, glinting in the dim light. Snatching it up, she jerks around and stabs Solomon in the neck.
The impact is dead-on. She presses the piston, fluid spurting into his bloodstream. Solomon gasps, face contorting. His fingers tighten on her ankle, then slacken. The drug spreads through his body like ripples across a still pond.
But his eyes remain locked on her's.
"Don't. Don't go."
He says it twice. Then he loses consciousness.
Saya immediately yanks her leg free. She wonders how many chemicals a Chevalier can endure, before suffering a fatal reaction.
Don't think about that. The more you worry about him, the lesser you'll want to leave.
You'll just end trapped with him again.
The voice has a strength to it, a banked urgency. She obeys it without question. Her body seems to be running on autopilot, too far away for remorse to catch up with her.
In the lounge, she leaves her wedding ring on the table, atop a folded note that reads, simply, I'm sorry. Slips on a long black fur-collared coat to disguise her belly, and dark glasses to hide her face.
Fifteen minutes later, she's in a cab heading for the airport.
Hands splayed on her stomach, she prays for the strength to endure the journey. She prays that her babies will stay inside until she's reached Okinawa, and that they'll be born healthy and intact. Prays that Solomon will wake up unharmed—but not in time to intercept her.
And most of all she prays that wherever Haji is, he'll find it in him to forgive her.
The bloodstone is a small point of reassurance, clenched in her fist. Mouth salty with traces of Solomon's blood, and tears she never felt herself shed.
Well, there we go. She's finally left the Tower of Doom. XD
The flashback where Saya and Solomon are in the tub is taken from the 'Colors of the Heart' opening. Ideally, I think it's Saya and Diva in that tub - but I just used it for esthetic purposes.
aegri somnia: an ill man's dreams.
Review please ;)